


Variation and Selection

by narie



Series: The Entangled Bank [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narie/pseuds/narie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best way of teaching is by example.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variation and Selection

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the kurt_blaine Hiatus Gift Exchange over on LJ. With warnings for academic dogmatism.

"It doesn't make any sense," whines Kurt, slamming his textbook shut. "I mean I understand the _idea_ and I'm all for it, but, monkeys, Blaine, _monkeys_. How do we get from monkeys to me? Or to you," he adds with an unabashedly fond look, and Blaine, who has swiftly come to know Kurt's hands, their intimate geography and the ways in which they weave and flutter and caress, lays his own hand palmside up on the table and waits for Kurt's to meet him there.

He does not have to wait long. Their fingers pressed together he says, "It's quite simple, actually. The first thing is, you have to stop thinking of it as directional. We were never an endpoint. It's not over, it's still happening, it's just slow. You can't see it in us, but, swine flu. Or AIDS."

This happens infrequently to them nowadays, this disparity of academic knowledge. The initial weeks after Kurt's transfer there were many holes in his knowledge to patch, entire collections of fact he had never been exposed to, and with time the gaps were filled and the self-conscious questions tapered off. Kurt is smart and quick, but it is true that his attention wavers drastically between things when he is not interested, and the uncompromising truths of science such as they are taught in public school in Lima, have never proven particularly alluring. But Blaine himself is a lover of all things simple and elegant, and the precise way life on the planet could be summed up by four quick postulates has appealed since Mr. Lehrer's tenth grade class. Kurt's hand is still twinned with his, and an idea begins to sprout in his mind. "I'll show you," he offers. "We'll do an experiment."

He tugs gently at Kurt's hand, bringing it to his mouth under Kurt's curious gaze, and lays an assortment of kisses against it. A chaste peck to the pad of Kurt's ring finger, a supplicant graze of lips against sharp knuckles, a slightly wet kiss pressed to the palm of Kurt's hands, a playful nip to the middle phalanx of his index finger. He presses Kurt's thumb against his lips and closes them around it without pressure, their warmths mingling; he stills his mouth over the inside of Kurt's wrist and feels the nervous thrumming of blood in veins under sinew and skin and only stops when he can think of no other easy ways in which to make his case. Kurt is still and his head is tilted to the side, but it's actually the width of his eyes, their brightness, that emboldens Blaine to continue and grants him confidence in the strength of this metaphor he has just invented.

"That," he explains, his own fingers stroking softly over all the spots he's just kissed, "was variation. They were all kisses, but they were different kinds of kisses. And now we're going to pretend that these new kisses are, uh, the offspring of the previous generation of kisses." Kurt laughs at that, smiles at him with some fond exhasperation underneath his affection and Blaine starts again, not aiming for precise repetition, but for sufficient closeness to make his point. He kisses his middle finger instead of his ring one, he swaps a first knuckle for a slightly cooler second one. He notices how Kurt shudders when Blaine ghosts air over the back of his hand as he moves from digit to digit, how his mouth tightens and curls slightly with distaste when he briefly traces his tongue up the lines in Kurt's palm. "So you see, some of that variation is heritable."

"And sometimes some kisses don't make it," he says, boldly leaning in for a third round. "Some of that heritable variation defines how good kisses are at surviving, and at mating, so you know, maybe the kisses got distracted on the way," and he ghosts his mouth over the rounded knob of Kurt's wristbone, "and other times they just don't make it, no matter how much they want to," he adds, pointedly pulling away from the pale skin of Kurt's pulse right before his lips touch it. Kurt whines softly, and Blaine moves back in, feels the subtle shifts in the tension of the tendons underneath him as his mouth explores for a few seconds, before the connecting thread is completely eroded away.

"Now, of all of those kisses you liked some best," he says, illustrating his point by pressing quick kisses to the pads of all five fingers, Kurt stiffening immediately beside him. Technically Blaine is cheating; he already knows that there is no better way to render Kurt happy and alight than to show him tender, uncomplicated affection, of the type Blaine likes a very close second best, but he is trying to make a point here and Kurt's eyes have drifted closed, his breathing unsteady as Blaine kisses each finger again. "And those are the ones that you will see more of, the ones that... reproduced the best and passed on their kissing genes through the generations at the expense of others." He looks up at Kurt's huffed laughter. "I'm stretching it, aren't I?"

"A bit," Kurt agrees, voice reedy and sharp. "Continue."

"Actually, that's all there is to it," says Blaine. "That's evolution."

"I still don't get it," Kurt says with a shake of his head. Blaine's expression slips for a second - he thought his metaphor would work - but then Kurt adds, "Maybe if you explained it again?"


End file.
